The present invention is in the field of product transportation of conveying technology in a high speed production and packaging process and relates to a product transfer process within the overall manufacturing process, particularly the taking over of products discharged from a machine and the delayed transfer to the manufacturing stage. In a specific embodiment, the product transfer process is directed at the discharge of goods packaged in a flow pack procedure.
A typical high speed manufacturing process, e.g. in chocolate manufacture starts with raw materials, which are generally automatically supplied to the production process from bin storage. Grinding, mixing, etc. take place fully automatically, whilst mixing and stirring are generally automated production processes. An intermediate batch operation, e.g. the emptying of the stirrers into containers with a capacity of up to 70 tonnes of chocolate material admittedly interrupts the continuous material flow, but does not alter the high mass potential of the manufacturing process. The first bottleneck problems in the case of high material throughout occur in the following injection, pouring or moulding process, in which the unshaped material is to be converted into lump, i.e. portion form.
As a result of the amorphous presence of the intermediate products, up to this point the production process of the material flow can be controlled by using simple means, usually pipe connections, which permit a relatively simple pipelining, which is especially suitable for fully automatic material transfer, it is no longer possible to transfer with mass product transportation method lumpy products, or preferably the portioned product so as to bring about a distinction between e.g. lump coal, which can also be pipeline-transferred.
The bottleneck problems increase particularly in the packaging section of the manufacturing process, in which in a single packaging line, e.g. a discharge of 50 tonnes/day in e.g. 0.0001 t portions make it necessary to control 500,000 packaging processes. Generally several such packaging lines are installed and also simultaneously operated.
If at the time of portioning the material flow was split up into several injection lines, so as to avoid bottlenecks by simultaneous, parallel operations, this becomes unavoidable in the case of the serial process of packaging. Thus, each injection line is followed by several parallel-operating packaging lines, in which the chocolate bars (portions) produced in this example are packed by a flow pack process developed for high packaging speeds. Generally the flow pack line is subsequently cut into portions and the loose individual products are collected in some way.
This is where the inventive idea comes into play. Normally the material flow of packed products, in this case chocolate bars, are either fully automatically or manually further processed. Often this takes place by human hand, e.g. by standard packing in boxes and the like, so that a difficult to handle multiple form (chocolate bars) is brought into an easier to handle, but more complicated smaller form (boxes). No matter what packaging procedure is adopted, singling to give packable portions breaks up excessively early a process-inherent order or arrangement.
Process-inherent order means that different operating stages are performed at different points, which in certain circumstances can be very close or very far from one another. The material must be conveyed between the individual operating or processing stages, which e.g. involve position changes and the like. They are to be looked upon as linking operations on the next process step and represent a given (transient) order in the overall flow. A disturbance to this order disturbs the sequence and a removal of said order blocks the sequence. Ordering actions can be looked upon as "introduced" ordering, collating or arranging elements. Process-inherent ordering elements are, however, hidden in the process sequence, but must be specifically sought for utilization purposes. They are rarely obvious and are usually so rare that often additional ordering elements are introduced into a process, where it would in fact be possible to use a process-inherent order. Thus, a process-inherent order is removed by an additional production stage and is replaced by an "introduced" ordering element.